


The Immaterial Stardust of His Being

by saltandlimes



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Competent Kylo Ren, Established Relationship, Frottage, Hand Jobs, Hux loves his ship, M/M, POV Hux, traditional sci fi tropes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-24 01:10:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9693263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltandlimes/pseuds/saltandlimes
Summary: After a Resistance attack, Finalizer's main reactor is only hours from total collapse. Hux tries to hold his ship and crew together, while planetside, miles below him, Kylo Ren races the clock to bring back parts for the reactor and save them.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [littleststarfighter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleststarfighter/gifts).



> A year ago today, I posted the first chapter of my first Kylux fic. Right around the same time, I saw some incredible art. Recently though, I've been absolutely stuck trying to write the ship. So in search of inspiration, I turned to art by the very same artist whose work I saw a year ago...
> 
> [Littleststarfighter,](http://littleststarfighter.tumblr.com/) your work is a constant inspiration, and looking back through your work and finding [this piece](http://littleststarfighter.tumblr.com/post/143237032747/when-we-collide-we-come-together-if-we-dont) finally let me write this ship again. This is for you, for being an incredible artist, but even more, for being such a kind person, and so nice to me.

Hux taps his fingers on the console. Three hours and forty five minutes left to go. That’s long enough. It has to be.

“Sir?” Mitaka’s voice echoes across the too-hushed bridge. “Sir, new reports coming in. The team on the ground thinks they’ve found a viable containment chamber for the reactor core, but they’re encountering heavy resistance on the surface of the planet.” 

Hux nods, bites his tongue against the pain of the report. His eyes water as he tastes copper, as he looks down at the screens blinking at him in constant refrain. He silenced the alarms hours ago, but the red lights still stare up at him accusingly. 

**Total main reactor failure imminent. Total reactor failure in 03:44**

“Did Ren give you his ETA?” Hux asks instead of pounding his fist into the screen. His voice is thick, throat catching at every word. 

“He said they’d be back aboard ‘soon enough to save us’” Mitaka repeats, hat slightly askew. Hux’s mouth twists up. _Soon enough._ Ren might as well have answered “never” for all that gives him to work with. He waves a hand at Mitaka, beckons him closer. 

“Has engineering reported in?” Hux’s voice is low, pitched so the men in the pits have no chance of hearing. If there’s bad news coming, he doesn’t need them to hear it. Their shoulders do not bear the weight of the ship, in all its monstrous glory. Their ears should not be forced to suffer the assaults that the engineering report is sure to bring. Mitaka grimaces, but replies in the same quiet voice. 

“Yes, sir.”

“And?” Hux prompts. He might almost feel bad, putting Mitaka in this position, forcing the lieutenant to read each new report of disaster as they cross through the web of communications that forms Finalizer’s beating heart. Almost, but not quite. It is all Mitaka is tasked with, after all. It is his fate to read as systems shut down, as stormtroopers are herded into their rooms, as enlisted men are kept in the dark about the coming disaster. Yet Mitaka does not need to think about them. 

They are words on a page to him. 

Hux stands there at the center of his ship, and he almost fancies he can feel it convulsing around him. Somewhere, out there just out of sight of the viewports on the bridge, somewhere is the great rent in Finalizer’s skin from the Resistance x-wing attack. If he closes his eyes for just an instant, he can see it in his mind, the torn metal and sundered beams twisting up into the dark of space. 

The Resistance had slipped in and caught them completely off guard. The Finalizer had been here above Lokori for three days already, refueling at the refinery left over from the Empire. And then, just this morning, Hux had woken up to the blaring of alarms three hours before his shift was supposed to begin.

He’d slipped out of bed, flicking on the lights as Ren did the same beside him. They’d shrugged into their uniforms without bothering to wash, and rushed out together, both of them stepping from Hux’s rooms and right into the path of a startled stormtrooper. Hux hadn’t even bothered to check his identification code. One rumor about him and Ren emerging fully dressed together from his quarters in the middle of third shift was nothing compared to the necessity of arriving at the bridge on time. 

They’d made it there just as one of the x-wings had lobbed some sort of plasma torpedo that took down part of the shields. The bridge had quieted as Hux walked in, but he’d been pleased to see that TIES were already in the air and countermeasures deployed. Less pleasing had been the data squawking out of his workstation. The shielding had fallen just above the main engineering deck, and as Hux watched, the x-wings had started the same sorts of diving attack runs that they’d used on Starkiller base, the same attack runs that had gutted his masterpiece. 

He almost screamed then, he remembers. He’d clenched his hands so tightly that one of the seams had split along his knuckles, gloves tearing themselves in two with the force of his anger. Yet he’d lowered his voice instead. The TIEs had flocked to cover the breach at his command, and only one x-wing had gotten through, scoring a long glancing blow right through the reactor casing. 

And now they are here, the main reactor only hours away from failing, and their only hope a replacement for the shattered casing somewhere on the planet far below them. Mitaka, even with all his reports and his knowledge, cannot not feel the weight of that horrible hope. He does not know in his very bones that their only hope rests on Ren’s arrival, on Ren’s success. Hux is sure of that.

Hux does. 

“Engineering says that all alternative methods of containment have failed.” Mitaka’s voice pulls Hux from his own mind, pushes him back into the immediacy of disaster. Hux nods. 

“Ren was not more specific with his ETA than ‘in time’?” Hux asks again. Mitaka’s face colors and he ducks it a little, hair falling across his forehead. 

“No, sir!” Mitaka replies. Hux purses lips that feel bitten raw. 

“I’ll be in my office comming Ren, then, lieutenant. Alert me if there are any major status changes, or if engineering offers an alternative solution.” He turns on his heel and stalks off the bridge through the door to his office. It slides shut behind him and Hux leans against it heavily. 

He rests his head against the durasteel for a long moment. It’s cold behind him, harsh, and it clears the fog that settled in his bones the moment it became clear that sending Ren down to Lokori was the only option. He reaches for the com at his wrist. The torn leather of his gloves gleams too bright in the light of his office, and Hux strips them off, bare fingers flexing. It takes only a second for them to dance over the com, and then it buzzes to life. 

“General. I’m busy.” It’s an audio only transmission, and in the background Hux can hear faint blaster fire. 

“What’s going on, Ren? We had control of the refinery.” Hux paces across the room. He does not think of Ren standing in the middle of a battlefield. He does not think of Ren’s hands outstretched, bending reality to his will. There is no time for thoughts such as those.

“The refinery, yes. The containment chamber was in an attached facility. The Lokori didn’t appreciate our… appropriating it.” There’s a hiss and Ren growls, loud through the com in the silence of Hux’s office. 

“Ren, we’re all going to die in three and a half hours.” Hux could bear that, he thinks, except… “the Finalizer is going to _explode_ , Ren. Will you be here in time?” 

“Did that half-wit lieutenant of yours not tell you? I will be there, General. I will not let your ship die.” There’s a long pause. “I will not allow you to die, Hux.” 

Hux stops in the middle of his office, his feet frozen to the floor. He rolls his shoulders, suddenly weighed down not by the impending death of his ship, but rather by the force of Ren’s words, by the taste of Ren’s passion, Ren’s promise. His hands clench at his sides, and this time there is no leather to split in two. The thrum of his blood is louder in his ears than the ever present hum of Finalizer’s beating machine heart. 

“I know you won’t, Kylo.” He whispers, just loud enough that the com picks it up. There’s the whistle of a blaster from the other end, and it shuts off abruptly. 

Hux sags into his chair. No ETA, and Ren down there, charging through blaster fire, a fury that Hux cannot afford to distract himself imagining. He passes his hand over his face. Then Hux stands. This is his ship. If he is to witness her death, become entombed among the stars with her, he will do it from her bridge. 

It is quiet when he walks back in. There is no sign that anyone has moved at all since he stepped away. Mitaka’s hair still falls across his forehead. Hux sighs, just barely inaudible. Now to wait. 

He makes a slow circuit of the bridge, checking in with each duty station, nodding as the officers read off the litany of systems that are slowly shutting down. He steps up to the weapons consoles and runs a bare finger over them for the first time since the ship was commissioned. She is cold to his touch, and for a moment he thinks that is unfair, that he cannot feel her breathing lungs underneath his caress. Then he makes his way back to the center of the bridge and stares out at the stars. 

It takes long minutes, endless and trembling. His eyes have started to blur before his com activates again. 

“ETA five minutes, General.” Ren’s voice echoes loud. Hux checks the chrono. Two hours and 38 minutes left before reactor failure. Just enough time to get the containment module in place and cycle the system. Just enough time.

He’s running for engineering before he tells his feet to move, directions to Ren snapped out as he moves. He drums his foot on the floor of the lift, levels ticking by at glacial speed. Then finally he’s dashing down the long hall that leads to engineering central control. 

When he gets there, Ren is already inside, arms crossed, the smell of burnt flesh and blood thick in the air around him. Hux glances in his direction then turns away. He can look down into the gash across the reactor casing through the transparisteel windows of the control room, can see teams of droids starting to ready themselves for the complex replacement maneuver. They’ll have only seconds once the new containment module is readied to slide it into place and remove the shattered remnants of its predecessor. 

The duty officer reels off a status report that Hux hardly hears. He cannot take his eyes off of the the surgery being performed just below them. Ren comes to stand beside him, but that is hardly noticeable either, just a familiar shadow fading to pitch at the corner of his eye. 

“Ten minutes until full containment module replacement, General.” Hux turns then. If they are only ten minutes away, he must have been standing at the window for almost forty minutes. There is just barely enough time left for the repairs, and he has let the agonizing minutes slip away from him as he watches the droids work. 

“Alert the ship,” Hux orders. He will not have them go blindly into this moment. If they are to become stardust, they will do so knowingly. Beside him, Ren’s breath hisses at the words, or perhaps at the thought. Hux turns back to the window. In a moment the blast shields will be lowered, but he takes this one last long look.

The window is shuttered, eyes falling closed at the first piercing rays of the sun at morning. Hux takes a gasping breath, perhaps the first in minutes. He peers at the readouts that document the droids’ progress. So far everything is going according to procedure. So far. 

Ren paces about the command center, leaving traces of dirt and bodily fluids on the floor as he stalks about. Maskless since Starkiller Base died, his face is blank now, head cocked a little to one side. Hux notes absently that the side of his head is coated in blood. But that will have to wait, wait just a little longer. As will Ren’s impatiences. There is nothing Hux can say that will speed what is either their death or their salvation. 

Suddenly, above them, an alarm sounds. 

“Reactor core cycling in process. Partial systems freeze for the next half hour. Containment field holding.” The automated sound of Finalizer’s broken body coming back to life echoes through the center. 

Hux’s head feels light. For a long moment, he wonders if he’s about to faint. 

They will not die today. 

His ship will live on. 

He grabs tight to the edge of the console, bending over. His breath hisses through his teeth as Hux pants. Behind him, he can feel Ren close. He pushes himself upward, hands aching from the force of his grip. 

“Nicely done, Ren. It seems the part you found will function.” His voice holds steady and Hux marvels at that, at the gratitude in his words. Ren nods, face still blank, long scar across his cheek pulled tight. Now that Hux’s eyes are not blinded he can see where new cuts have found their way through Ren’s flesh, tiny scrapes across his chin and down his neck. They are little things, set against the destruction Hux has seen written across that face, but they are there. 

“Did you doubt it, General?” Ren quirks his head in that peculiar fashion he has. 

“I doubt everything, Ren.” Hux steps away. There are twenty three minutes left before they are certain the reactor has cycled successfully, and he intends to check every other system at least cursorily in that time. There is no good in being spared death by the blaster only to fall to the saber. 

The walk back to the lift is nothing like Hux’s headlong dash earlier. Nothing like those breathless moments, frantic hoping. No, this time, Ren stalks at his side, and it could almost be any day, save for the fact that they have both been on duty for far longer than is normal, with far less sleep. Hux blinks his eyes open a little wider, trying to get the grit to disappear from their corners. The back of his neck is tight, tiny spots swimming through his veins, his limbs a little heavier than usual. 

He and Ren step into the lift at the same time. Here, in the enclosed space, he can smell the metallic tang of blood and the acrid sharpness of smoke even more strongly. One side of Kylo’s hair is matted down, blood still gleaming dully in the bright lights of the lift. It can’t be human, to have lasted this long without turning to a rust red mass, and Hux breathes a sigh of relief he didn’t even know he was holding in. 

“Your hair is in your face, Hux.”

Ren’s voice splits the silent air between them, and for a moment, Hux just stares. Then Ren’s words register. Finally, impossibly. His hair is in disarray. Hux’s stomach spasms, clenching, and for a moment he thinks he’s going to be sick. But instead of bile, he tastes laughter. It spills out of him, bubbling up to echo around the edges of the lift. He grabs onto the wall, fighting to stay upright as he wheezes. Ren cocks his head sideways. 

Slowly, Hux’s frantic giggles slow. He straightens, spine uncurling, breath panting out of him. The fingers he runs through his hair tremble a little. Ren just watches, eyes unflinching. The lift stops and the door slides open.

When Hux finally steps back onto the bridge, everyone looks up. There is none of the desperate focus from before, the knife edge of terror souring the air. Instead, Mitaka actually grins when Hux appears. There is a rustle from the pits. When Hux looks down, when he walks past, there is not a single person still seated. They all stand at attention as he and Ren pass. Silent, perfectly correct, yet Hux can feel the eyes on him, the smiles half concealed by professional facades. 

His console is clear of the flashing alarms from before. Now there is only the scrolling status reports, the flashing alerts as systems reboot and come completely back online. He pulls up the environmental controls, checks over oxygen levels and CO2 scrubbing. It all looks good, at least as far as Hux can see. He knows as much about Finalizer as is possible for a single man, he cannot doubt that. But even so, he designs weapons. He is not a biologist, not an environmental engineer. He knows the specs. That is enough. 

Beside him and a few paces away, Ren stares out at the ship. There is blood on the side of his neck. Hux bites his lip. Ten more minutes before the reactor core finishes cycling. He clasps his hands behind his back, naked fingers biting into his palms. He goes to stand next to Ren. 

“I take it we should probably write off Lokori as a safe planet with a useful refinery?” He asks in a low voice. Ren nods. 

“That’s probably for the best, General. I can’t imagine the Lokori would want to invite us to return any time soon.” Ren’s fingers fly up, press into one of the tiny cuts across his chin. “I would not do so, were I them. It might be costly.” 

There is a snarl in Ren’s voice on those final words, and Hux nods. He will not continue to push. Not now. He will wait, wait out these last six minutes in silence. 

The stars above the ship are bright, glimmering down at them. Hux can almost remember the first time he’d seen them like this, from the bridge of a ship. He’d been a child, just taken away from his mother, “rescued.” And he’d marveled at the sky, vaulted above him, larger than ever he had imagined. The stars had seemed close enough to hold in the palm of his hand, yet so far away that they were only tiny silvering pits in the black fabric of the universe. 

He remembers better the moment when he’d realized that the ever changing stars of shiplife were more familiar to him than the Arkanis night sky. He’d been a lieutenant on his first cruise, and by chance they’d spent a month on planetside. The first week he’d been unnerved every time he’d stepped out of doors at night. It was only on the tenth day that he’d realized it was the night sky, the constellations that sat in their appointed houses, only slowly flowing across the sky. He’d stared at them, at the stars that could not move, and felt somehow that these planet dwelling people were missing the most important part of things. 

Hux shakes his head. One more minute before he finds out if his ship has been successfully repaired, and here he is, dreaming of stars. He turns back to his console just in time to see the the report from engineering flash on the screen. 

>   
> **Attn: Hux, Gen. 20:12**  
>  Reactor cycle successful. All systems normal.

Hux flicks away the message, then pulls up the status specs himself on his own screen. He scans them, making a note of a tiny power fluctuation in the secondary plasma injector and sending it off to the chief engineering officer. Other than that, everything seems normal. He takes a deep breath. Then he turns to the bridge, hands clasped behind his back. 

“The reactor is back online. Thanks to the efforts of Kylo Ren and the rest of his squad, the containment module has been successfully replace. And thanks to you all, we were able to defend against the Resistance fighters efficiently, so that more damage was not done.” Hux starts to walk towards the door off bridge. While this is a replacement shift, he has been on his feet since early this morning. 

“Thank you all. You have done well. Mitaka, you have the bridge.” 

As Hux walks out, Ren once again at his heels, there’s a collective gasp from the bridge crew that almost overwhelms Mitaka’s “I have the bridge.” Hux can’t remember the last time he thanked the bridge crew, but it’s good to know that they still react favorably to it. He sets off at a brisk walk, heels tapping on the floor.

“Your gloves are missing.” Ren steps up beside him as they round the corner. The corridor that leads to Hux’s quarters is deserted, and they slip inside together. 

“I tore them.” The words echo in the empty sitting room, loud against the darkness before Hux pulls up the lights. “You didn’t notice? It was during the battle.”

Ren shakes his head. Hux unclasps his belt, trying not to look too hard at what Ren is doing. Here, even more than in the lift together, the stench of battle is overwhelming. He can almost taste the heat of Ren’s skin, the grime and sour sweat streaked across it. He steps into his bedroom. 

Ren follows. 

Hux does not turn. Instead, he carefully strips off his tunic, dropping it in the laundry chute. The air is cool against his skin, his undershirt little protection. He rolls his shoulders. They’re tight, muscles protesting as he crosses first one arm and then the other in front of his chest, pulling to feel the stretch across his back. Behind him, there’s the rustle of fabric. 

“Hux…” Ren breathes, from somewhere off his left shoulder. Hux hesitates. He has spent so much of the day waiting on Ren, hoping for Ren, relying on Ren. He need not turn now. He can step forward into the refresher, can wash the aches of the day and topple into bed. Ren can do nothing if Hux does not acknowledge him. Hux does not need anything from Ren, not now. 

He turns. 

Ren has stripped down too. There’s a streak of blood running across his chest, his fingers bright where they’ve dipped into the mess at the side of his head. Now, alone, in this quiet place that is all their own, Hux can take the time to look. There are no bruises raising themselves on Ren’s skin, no cuts other than those small things that streak his chin. Hux takes a deep breath, chest expanding in the still air. 

It’s only a few steps, and then Hux is face to face with him, close enough to feel Ren’s breath as it whispers against his skin. 

“My ship is still here.” Hux whispers. Ren nods, biting his lip. “I was… for a few moments I was worried.” It hurts, pulling that out of himself. As though up until now it had been abstract, only a thought at the back of his mind, overshadowed by dreams of stardust and energy flows in the reactor and sheer purpose. 

“The ship is fine, Hux.” Ren’s voice is flat. 

“You don’t sound pleased.” The back of Hux’s neck crawls. This is their home, and Ren just stands there, staring into Hux’s eyes. 

“Of course I’m glad the ship didn’t explode, Hux. I am not so far gone as to wish that pain on anyone.” Ren’s words bite. He knows, of course. He knows there was a time when Hux wished he could be rid of Ren. Where Hux would have gladly watched Ren lose his shuttle, his knights, just to see him suffer. 

No longer. That time died with Starkiller Base. 

“You could have _died._ ” The words rush out of him, and he grabs tight to either side of Ren’s face, knocking their foreheads together. “Those fucking savages down on Lokori could have killed you and I’d just have been up here, waiting to die myself.”

“I didn’t die, Hux.” Ren tries to pull back a little, but Hux only holds tighter to him. 

“You could have failed and I could have died here, with you so far away that I couldn’t even hear your voice in those last moments. I could have died without getting to do this again.” Hux can hear his voice pitching higher and higher, but he can’t help it, breath whistling out of him, back tensing again. His fingers tighten on Ren’s face, and the still wet Lokori blood oozes between them. 

“ _I didn’t die._ ” Ren repeats. “I’m still here, Hux. You’re still here.” But Hux feels almost immaterial, as though he was scattered to the starfield in truth, and this here is only the collected immaterial particles of his being. He buries his face in Ren’s neck. 

Ren’s skin tastes of salt under his tongue, sharp and human. Hux parts his lips, flattens his tongue against the curve of muscle. He sucks slowly on it. He can feel the rise and fall of Ren’s chest beneath his hand as he traces it downward. Ren is solid, real, something to latch onto. 

Before Hux thinks too hard about it, he closes his teeth down on the gritty sweetness of Ren’s throat. He bites down, trying to hold himself to reality, trying to gather the stardust of his being. Ren groans. Hux’s raw-bitten lips scrape across Ren’s skin. 

When he pulls away, there’s a blood-red ring on Ren’s skin, bite mark stark against his neck. Hux doesn’t remember breaking the skin, but above him Ren is panting, pupils blown wide. Hux licks his teeth clean, and tastes the sharp tang of metal. 

All of an instant, he slams back inside of his own body, fingertips trembling, bones humming. His fingers flex on the side of Ren’s face, and he feels Ren’s hand come up to cover his. Ren’s breath flutters again his skin. Hux catches his gaze. It’s clouded, but as Hux stares into his eyes, Ren focuses. 

“Hux,” Ren breathes again. As his lips part, Hux leans forward. Then he’s pressing his mouth against Ren’s, tasting the sourness of his own desperation. Ren’s hand falls away from Hux’s, leaves its place cupped around his face. Hux gaps against the wetness of Ren’s lips, even as Ren’s hands scrabble at his hips. 

For long moments, all he can feel is Ren. The world around him fades, the stardust coalesces, and they hang there, hands dragging over bodies stiff with fatigue and aching with unspent fear. Ren’s tongue searches his out. 

Their mouths fit together in standard configurations now, predictable after so many months like this. And yet, entombed in silence as they are, even the way that Hux always sucks on Ren’s bottom lip, Ren always on his top seems to be a small, shining thing. One of Ren’s hands slips beneath Hux’s shirt, and Hux feels the sticky drag of Ren’s fingers as they trace over the curves of his bones. He scrabbles at Ren’s body, fingernails dragging uselessly. When he ducks his head to nose back at the ring of tooth marks on Ren’s neck, the blood there smells different, more real, than that streaking Ren’s body. 

Ren’s groan bursts out of the cocoon of their bodies. 

The world resolves itself, settling back into the known colors and everyday textures of their lives. Hux finds himself pulling Ren towards the bed, dragging him along by one red stained hand. Ren stumbles after him. Hux throws back the covers, collapsing on the sheets and dragging Ren after him. Ren’s weight is heavy on his chest, his hands bracketing Hux’s face as he rests on his forearms. 

“We are both still here, Hux. The ship is still here. _We are alive._ ” Hux wraps his legs around Ren’s waist, pressing their hips together as Ren moves to kneel, pulling his weight off of Hux’s chest. Then, cock thickening against the insistent roll of Hux’s hips, Ren slides his hands underneath Hux’s undershirt again, pushes it up to bunch underneath Hux’s arms. His fingers trace patterns on Hux’s exposed chest. 

“Show me,” Hux groans out. “Please, Ren. Show me we’re here. Show me that the walls have not fallen in about us, that the dark of space has not found its way inside our hearts.” Ren leans down to bite at his chest, lips warm as they trace a line down Hux’s stomach. He bites at the softness there, teeth digging in a little and Hux can’t help the moan that spills out of him. 

“Do you feel that, Hux?” Ren roles their hips together as he straightens. “Do you feel me hard against you? Do you feel the rush of air on your face, the slow exhale of the ship’s breath?” 

His arms slip underneath Hux, and he’s pulling Hux up to straddle him as he kneels. Hux can feel how Ren’s cock nudges against his, how they grind together. It’s sharp, almost too much, but the burn of friction between them is everything he needs right now. Ren grabs the waistband of Hux’s trousers. He pulls them open without care, without any attention to their delicate fastenings. Hux groans. 

“We are here. We are breathing. Our hearts are beating together.” His mouth comes to suck at the skin stretched tight across the knob of Hux’s shoulder and Hux shivers. Ren fumbles his own leggings down, and the brush of his cock as it springs from them tears a moan from Hux’s throat. 

Ren wraps his hand around their cocks, his thumb passing over the heads to drag down the side. Hux moans. Somehow, already he is burning for it, his entire being straining against Ren’s palm. Ren gasps into his ear. His free arm wraps tight around Hux’s waist, urging Hux to fuck up into his hand. The rhythmic press of his hand on Hux’s lower back brings Hux tumbling down, completely in his body as he has not been all day. 

“Ren,” he pants. “Ren, please. I need to feel.” It’s strange, begging for something that should be as instinctual as breathing. But he needs the drag of Ren’s hand on his dick, the press of Ren’s thighs between his. He needs the way his balls are starting to draw up, the way heat pools at the bottom of his spine to spread across his legs in shimmering spirals. He needs to coalesce here, to become flesh and blood rather than shattered waiting gasps. 

Ren captures his lips, and they breathe together, panting into each other’s mouths, Hux can feel himself tensing, Ren’s grip getting tighter. His hips jerk upward. Ren’s cock is leaking against his, and the slickness is welcome, the slide of Ren’s skin against his. Ren moans, his voice cracking and breaking like grinding stone. 

And somehow, that’s what pushes Hux over the edge. He shakes in Ren’s arms, spilling himself across Ren’s belly, getting them both wet with his come and he slumps forward to rest his forehead on Ren’s shoulder.

“Force, Hux,” Ren mouths at his neck, his ear, hard cock still sliding across Hux’s softening one, too much sensation and not enough all at once. Then Ren’s coming too, hips twitching and breath halting for long moments. 

When Ren finally settles, Hux’s hair is in his eyes, damp with sweat, and he’s almost boneless on Ren’s lap. Ren eases them down to lie on their sides, intertwined, bloodstained. He looks into Hux’s face and his eyes glitter. 

“We are alive. We are more than mere dreams, we are real.” Ren’s voice is low, the words pressed into the space between them. Hux nods.

“We are more than scattered shards on the solar winds. We are no longer stardust.”

**Author's Note:**

> My everlasting appreciation to [kyluxtrashcompactor](http://kyluxtrashcompactor.tumblr.com), who looked this over for me. All that glitters is not gold, but you are.
> 
> Also to [thecopperriver](http://thecopperriver.tumblr.com/) for your cheerleading and for all the hux feelings. 
> 
> Come hang with me on tumblr at [saltandlimes](saltandlimes.tumblr.com/)


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